Linux: command line only?

[oz]

I was just wondering if any of you happen to run your Linux boxes from the command line only? In other words, you don't run X at all.

If so, what kinds of problems do you encounter by doing so, and can you describe any advantages or benefits from doing this?

This is something I've been thinking about trying for a while, but I'd like to hear from others doing it before venturing into it myself.

Thanks in advance for any input.

[techieMoe]

I've never done it for any long period myself, but I did know a fellow in college who did it. After a while he became quite the wizard with shell scripts and multiple virtual consoles.

On a somewhat related note, he created a script that would trigger any time he got frustrated with a program and typed expletives into the command line. It would then respond by showing him ASCII pornography. An interesting guy he was.

[smolloy]

I set up a "no X" mode on my laptop once. The main reason was that I wanted to be able to write my thesis while on a plane, and not have the battery run down as fast. Maybe disabling X to save battery life is a little naive, but I tried it anyway.

I was still able to get a lot of work done, editing latex files with vim.

[bigtomrodney]

I haven't done exactly that but I do a decent amount of configuration and diagnosing for my Dad's PC over ssh. He lives about 50 miles away from me so it's a really handy way to do things. I would often be on the phone or an instant messenger at the same time but that's mostly to involve my Dad or to have him do the hardware things. With the exception of a bad X setup (which turned out to be a BIOS issue) I have been able to do pretty much everything I needed.

Though now that I think of it it's kinda cheating the odd time I enable X forwarding

[flipjargendy]

When I was six years old my dad began teaching me DOS commands so I could play Police Quest. I think this made me the way I am. I have a, sort of, affinity to the command line, I'd say.

Since I started using Linux I've pretty much depended on the command line. I tried using a command line only setup for a while. It was fun but you can't see all the imagery and what not online. If you do anything that people need to view in a definite way (ex. a website you design or app you code) you'll need the GUI. But if you have another computer you can view it on there.

That's mainly why I use X now. I still, mostly, use the command line but find it almost necessary these days to have a GUI to see how something looks on a website or something like that.

I just installed a server on my desktop (it was just sitting there in my closet) and am getting my command line fix via SSH! Woohoo!

[oz]

Thanks for the replies, guys.

I already use the command line for all my system tweaking, but I'm inclined to think that going command line only would force me to brush up on some of the more obscure commands.

For my Linux system, I'd stick with Arch, as it provides a nice base system to get started with. For email, I was thinking about mutt, and for the web, I was thinking about links, or even lynx. For any IRC chatting, irssi should do fine. My file management would likely be accomplished on the command line itself, but I could always resort to midnight commander if I needed it.

Some of my CD/DVD burning is already accomplished by command line, so no problem there. I'm comfortable using vim for editing text files, but I have no familiarity with any word processing apps under command line. Can anyone recommend something for that purpose?

What other various command line apps can you recommend to someone considering taking the plunge?

Thanks again!

[Cabhan]

The only word-processing that I know of under the commandline is LaTeX. Plain text (edit with vim), compile to dvi with the latex app, convert to PS with dvips, and convert to PDF with ps2pdf (or you can just use pdflatex).

There are also a few .doc readers I found for the commandline (Antiword, Catdoc). But first off, I don't think they convert to DOC, and secondly, I don't think you want to use DOC.

I would recommend taking a look at LaTeX, though. Syntax takes some getting used to, and learning the commands can take a bit, but it's pretty easy to use, and it creates very attractive PDFs.

[d38dm8nw81k1ng]

i did some time in the command line. it's not that bad, though i stick to X because i get bored of just text sites and stuff like that. most apps i use are CLI (irssi, vim, gdb etc) so it's not that different for me.

[fingal]

Personally I love using a GUI, but I get a strange thrill from using the CLI. You would indeed learn a lot from a command line only approach.

I've found HTOP to be useful for monitoring system processes, and I think you would be fine for most things (including burning CDs). However I wouldn't enjoy surfing the web without a GUI.

I tried using mutt once but didn't do very well with it. Maybe that's just me.

[Freston]

The first computer I could lay my hands on without someone watching my every keystroke was a 286 with a 4 color monitor (actually, it was 3 shades of orange and black counted as a color) and a HD of 21 MB. It was my dad's, who bought it to replace a broken typewriter.

Hard drives where optional in those days, and mouses where only for graphical applications. So we didn't have one. To everyones surprise it only had a 3¼ disk drive, whereas everyone else had floppies. It had DOS, WP 5.1, PCTOOLS, Lotus123 and later we where able to run FlightSim on it.

I really loved that computer. It booted in under 20 seconds, and the BIOS check was the major time consumer. When my dad bought a replacement, it I got this one. I've worked on it for years. The replacement computer was a 386, and it had Windows 3.11. Nobody liked Windows, not in my house at least. You could fire up any application a lot faster from the prompt, and I even got the mouse to work in WP5.1 when run under DOS. Computers in those days didn't boot into Windows by default, you had to manually edit (anyone remember edlin :-p) autoexec.bat.

Later Windows95 found it's way to our house, and I've tried to get the machine not to boot into it. I failed, and I hated that. I did a lot of work from the prompt back then. You couldn't run Word from DOS, but then, Word could do nothing the much older WP couldn't do. The only advantage Word had over WP was that you could make out what word processor someone used by the font. It was difficult to change font in WP as they only shipped it with one. Nobody cared, but the font of Word was more modern looking and nicer.

If something complicated needed to be done, you still had to go outside of Windows95 and use DOS. That stayed that way until XP. I hated XP for that reason, and I only found out recently that XP can get you into a prompt. And... you've guessed it, that was when something complicated needed to be done The helpdesk of my mothers ISP taught me how to do that... she runs Ubuntu now

Anyway. When I switched to Linux permanently a small year ago, after some failed attempts during the Linux hype and dual booting for a long time, what I really loved was the power of the shell. Yes, graphics are prettier, sometimes faster, and for most every day applications just the way to go. Firefox, Kontact, OOo all require X.

But installing, testing, scripting, maintenance, file management, burning, what have you? Just playing around; I use the shell.

A friend of mine is an IT professional using another OS, he sais "do you still use the shell?" But it's no matter. All this power at the tip of your fingers. I realize all of a sudden that I fire up and close many graphical applications from the Konsole I always have open.